There is no information on the selection of the Team or of the Advisory Board. The respective roles are left obscure. What are the responsibilities of the Advisory Board, for example?

The demographics of the Advisory Board are not reflective of the membership of the APA or of the broader philosophical community. The demographics are not representative along lines of gender, sex, areas of specialization, experience, geography, employment histories. It is unclear if there is any ideological diversity on the Board. Too many of the members of the Team and Advisory Board have known, highly controversial views on the instigating events of the project, in particular regarding the Tuvel/Hypatia controversy. The project thereby appears political slanted and ideologically tainted.

It is unclear where competence lies with respect to the methodology employed by the Team. The project here is not an intra-institutional project, but one directed at a wide range of outsiders. It may that the consultant has experience with similar efforts, but it is not apparent from the webpage.

The Team is somewhat suspect on other grounds. The inclusion of the Executive Director of the APA is troubling. The project is not sponsored by the APA, yet its Executive Director is a central player and the APA released an Press Statement about the Project, quoting the Executive Director. The Press Release nowhere says that Ferrer is acting on her own or that the APA is not involved in the project, or otherwise clarifying relationship between the APA and the project. It strikes me as inappropriate for the Executive Director to have such a role because it creates a host of conflicts and problems that cast doubt on the integrity of the Project, when the involvement is not approved by the APA governing board.

Methodological Issues.

There is too little information about the people who actually participated in the focus groups. While the initial outreach was appropriately wide, that is of no help if those who actually showed up were not representative of journal editors in philosophy. Without such information, the reporting at least sounds, if not is, merely anecdotal. Even if there is some reason not to identify the actual participants, or the journals represented (I do not see why anonymity would be important here, but there may be reasons), other indicia of an adequately representative set should have been provided.

The project is misrepresented in the descriptions. It is not about general issues of ethics in publishing, but on a set of narrower concerns, framed in a leading fashion. The central project is: “our project has been especially interested in work on and by marginalized groups, including but not limited to inclusive citation and engagement practices, peer-review practices, and scholarly consideration of the effect of the research being undertaken on those most affected by that scholarship.” That is certainly a legitimate stance and worth exploring and developing. It is not a good basis for developing a general ethics of publishing as, by its very terms, it is not addressing the general publishing practices as they affect the greater portion of the APA or philosophical community.

The questions used for the focus groups and for the “intuition pumps” are focused on, and slant responses to, the issues identified in the quotation above. As noted, that is not illegitimate on its own, but is not helpful o proposed project of an ethics of publication.

The central or key terms are not properly explained or defended. The Paper makes no distinction between Ethics of Publication and Best Practices. It assumes a normative account that is nowhere set out. The Paper assumes that, for example, it is unethical not to adopt what it calls “inclusive citation” practices. That is a controversial claim that should be defended, not assumed. It is not obvious that there is anything immoral in limiting citation to sources that were actually relied, whether or not there are arguments for a different sort of citation practice. The use of “ethical” in this context is a way of loading the conversation in favor of particular views. The Paper does not distinguish or explain how the Ethics of Publishing relates to best practices. It may be that there is no difference between them in the minds of the authors, but that would be a mistake. To the extent there are suggestions of ‘best practices’, the suggestions should be supported by explanation. There is too little explanation, and at important points, none at all.

The Paper uses inconsistent qualitative terminology. For example, in three succeeding paragraphs, ‘rare’ means 20.8%, ‘uncommon’ means 17.7% and ‘rarer still’ means 6.8%. Such inconsistencies cast doubt on the qualitative reports. Doubt is increased when the Paper reports views and comments while at the same time admitting that they have no significance other than anecdote, i.e., that the they came from an input source that was too small to be significant.

There are focus groups of Editors, Publishers, and of APA Committee members. There is no explanation of how the APA members were selected. There were no focus groups composed of readers of journals or the submitters. In other words, key sets of stakeholders were not included.

Substantive Issues.

The previous posts concerned what I saw as problems or potential problems with the Paper. I want to emphasize that here I am trying to identify important substantive issues, and not thereby suggesting that the positions are wrong or constitute a problem.

The Recommendations at the end of the Paper (beginning at 53) are, by and large, uncontroversial (in my view). Explicit policies and guidelines on reviewer conduct, etc., are desirable. Publication processes can be improved. Many of the Recommendations are sensible, e.g., make clear what the review process is, make clear what reviewer duties are, think about burdens on reviewers, etc. An invitation to consider whether there are matters beyond plagiarism that constitute misconduct that journals should respond to is certainly a topic worth discussing.

Some Recommendations are controversial. From Recommendations under “Discuss and disclose”:

Journals should diversify the range of accepted styles of expression and argument.

Journals should consider specific expectations regarding engagement with and scholarship by and about marginalized groups.

Journals should have a position on the possibility of harm done to marginalized groups as a consequence of work published in the journal.

Word count, bibliography, and citation policies may limit the works an author engages with.

Journals should have policies and procedures for responding to allegations of misconduct from or by reviewers, authors, readers, editors.

These constitute small portion of the items listed in the Paper, and a smaller portion than one might expect given the space devoted to the issues in earlier portions of the White Paper. And, to emphasize the obvious, they are proposed as topics of discussion by journals and, to my mind, the controversy really lies in the responses.

There is a list of Sample Policies (at 56-7), accompanied by a disclaimer of any endorsement of the listed policies.

Recommendation 2 is to take steps to diversify journal leadership and reviewer base. The recommendation includes suggestions about how that might be done. The focus is on scholars from marginalized groups. (A definition is offered at note 8 (p. 70) for ‘marginalization’.)

Peer review is at Recommendation 4. (I would have put this first, as it is the core of the publication process.) There is a focus on issues particularly pressing in small sub-fields where anonymity is more difficult and the workloads of review are more narrowly distributed. One point of controversy in this section is the encouragement of “inclusive citations.” (The language is picked up from one of the Sample Policies (note 51), which is not entirely consistent with the claim that the Sample Policies are not recommended or endorsed.) Another is the discussion of work where anonymity is difficult to maintain because of the authors’ distinctive voice, use of own life experiences, or has discussed the work in conferences or colloquia, which is focused on the concern that such authors “are not at a disadvantage.” That the same features may just as well give an advantage is not noted.

To the extent the Recommendations are controversial, it is due either TO the particular phrasing adopted in the White Paper or surrounding social controversy. The ideas are all susceptible of quite vanilla interpretations.

Finally, a discussion in the body of the White Paper I found troubling concerned ‘misconduct’. There is, first, the suggestion that there is sufficient misconduct (of some undefined sort) for developing institutional responses to be a significant issue. If so, it is not sourced in the text or notes. There is reference to four instances the authors think involved misconduct. See note 6. Except in one case, the authors give no explanation of what the misconduct was. It may that they have a wide view of misconduct. As the body of the Focus group discussions make apparent, however, it is far from uniform to think anything other than plagiarism (narrowly construed) is misconduct in publication, so it would not be a viable line for the authors to claim the misconduct in the other three cited instances is or was obvious. What the views of the authors or the Advisory Board are on what constitutes misconduct in publishing is not discernible from the White Paper. But it is a topic that calls for caution. Aside from the logistical burdens of asking journals to adopt standards of misconduct beyond plagiarism, there are significant political risks. I saw argument that would support the notion that it is unethical to hold or defend stupid views, or that it is unethical to choose citations without regard for demographics, etc. There is a difference between irresponsible work and unprofessional work, and between unprofessional work and unethical work. The White Paper gives little indication that the authors have thought much about the issues or to views inconsistent with their own (would that mean that they are unethical in publishing it?).

Conclusion: Beginning at 53, the White Paper makes useful and, in substance, reasonable proposals for consideration and discussion. The administrative problems could be addressed by substantial changes in the staffing of the project. If the project is sound, such changes will not impair the value of the outcome, and need not cause undue delay or additional cost. The methodological issues may be resolved by disclosure of more information about the focus groups. If not, the necessary additional resources may be difficult to secure. It is not clear if the focus group material matters very much to recommendations, but that too could be resolved by greater transparency.